Henry Poole Is Here.

"I have never before had a film simultaneously insult both my agnosticism and my Catholic upbringing," declares the Stranger's Annie Wagner. "Henry Poole Is Here is condescending toward believers, contemptuous toward disbelievers, and has the worst soundtrack in the entire history of cinema."

"In the mawkish tradition of movies like Simon Birch, Wide Awake, August Rush and Hearts in Atlantis, Henry Poole Is Here is insufferable hokum that takes itself very, very seriously," warns Stephen Holden in the New York Times.

Updated through 8/16.

"Henry Poole cycles through so many indie film clichés - the dour, depressed loner nursing a dark secret, a motley group of outsiders that form an unlikely but loving surrogate family, a welcoming circle of mourning, a touch of twee magic realism, a tremblingly earnest alt-rock soundtrack - that it continually skirts self-parody," writes Nathan Rabin at the AV Club. "[Luke] Wilson travels an achingly familiar arc from drunken, sour loneliness and alienation to healthy engagement with the outside world, but this leaden, sluggishly paced film takes forever to get to its pre-determined destination and boasts a tone that runs the gamut from mournful to sad to melancholy."

"[Director Mark] Pellington applies his message - the necessity of hope - a trifle thickly over the proceedings, treating the Christ image's magical powers with such reverence that you're almost set up to expect an M Night Shyamalan third-act switcheroo," writes Tim Grierson in the Voice. "What you're left with instead is a film that could have used some of the genuine intrigue of Pellington's thrillers to help offset the increasingly doe-eyed narrative."

"It would be easy for a foreign audience watching Henry Poole Is Here to assume that America is composed solely of preachers and secularists, two camps all but unable to have civil conversations with each other," writes S James Snyder in the New York Sun. "Maybe this is true in some communities across this country - and perhaps that's the polarized state of the nation that is painted by so many cable-news commentators - but for the majority of Americans, this is a film that will have no bearing on reality."

"You see, God works in mysterious ways and since we have little power to interfere, it's best not to question him," explains Andrew Schenker in Slant. "Above all, the film suggests, it's best not to think."

Earlier: Reviews from Sundance.

Updates, 8/16: "Does it raise any interesting, life-changing questions?" asks Jeffrey M Anderson at Cinematical. "Sadly, no. The film is too bored and lackadaisical with its subject to change much of anything. It's too uninspired to be inspirational."

Jeffrey Overstreet rounds up "a wide range of responses."

Posted by dwhudson at August 15, 2008 9:14 AM